Quick Facts
Biography
Dan Haifley is an American environmentalist and newspaper columnist.
Since 1999, he has been Executive Director of O'Neill Sea Odyssey, a non-profit organization offering a free oceanography and ecology program for school-aged youth sailing Monterey Bay – a bay of the Pacific Ocean, along the central coast of California.
Career
From 1986 to 1993, Haifley was Executive Director of Save Our Shores, based in Santa Cruz, California, where he spearheaded the creation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary as Co-Chair of the Environmental Working Group. He also led the effort against offshore oil drilling, including passage of twenty-six local ordinances in California counties and cities limiting development of onshore facilities for offshore drilling, and their defense against a lawsuit by the oil industry as represented by the Western Oil and Gas Association.
Haifley writes the column "Our Ocean Backyard" for the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper.
In August 2011, he was given the Ocean Hero award by Save Our Shores.
According to the book Jack O'Neill: It's Always Summer on the Inside (2011) by Drew Kampion, Haifley – as the program's executive director – has argued the program's position that ocean concepts should be adopted in formal education standards and made more widely available to youth from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.